Dignified or indignant in Farmersville?

Two years ago, when my sister-in-law died, I participated in the preparation of her body for burial. I had never done it before, nor was I familiar with the ritual. I hadn’t expected to be called on for the task, but when my family arrived at the funeral home the staff told us that it was a family obligation for me and my two sisters-in-law to help prepare her body for burial according to Islamic tradition.

Thus the day after she passed away I stood in a mortuary wearing an ill-fitting blue surgical apron and over-sized blue surgical gloves feebly helping the experienced mortuary staff wash her body using the same ritual Muslims use to wash before prayer. After her body was washed, I watched them wrap her neatly in a white shroud.

Islamic tradition mandates, as does Jewish tradition, that no more than a day pass between a Muslim’s death and burial. There is no wake, no cushion of time to absorb the reality of a death, no cosmetic techniques to beautify the corpse, no whiskey toasts to the departed. The funeral happens quickly and surviving friends and family must quickly tend to the details of their deceased’s lives and to their grief.

She was buried in a large cemetery in the section dedicated to Muslim burials.

Her grave is near the graves of children and of great-grandmothers, of immigrants whose place of birth was far from their place of death, of people born and raised in America who learned the pledge of allegiance in elementary school.

She lays near people of all colors and ages from a multitude of professions, near people who died with dreams unfulfilled and people who died satisfied that their goals had been achieved.

She shares the earth with people who died suddenly and people for whom death was a release from pain. People who died alone, who died in ambulances, who died surrounded by loved ones. Doubtless they were all lowered into the ground with care.

Where could we find anyone with hearts so callous as to revile the careful commitment of a loved one to the grave?

In Farmersville, Texas, that’s where. A proposal by the Islamic Association of Collin County to create a Muslim cemetery in land outside the small town has caused outrage among a vocal group of the town’s 3,000-odd residents. Opponents have protested strongly, to the town’s zoning and planning comission and to the media, about the dangers an Islamic burial ground might bring.

One resident suggested putting pigs’ heads on spikes and pouring pig’s blood on the future cemetery site so “they won’t buy the land.” The reference is to the Islamic prohibition on eating pork, but the suggestion sounds like macabre superstition, perhaps something more pagan than Christian. It evokes vampires and zombies. It is ludicrous.

“We used to grow onions here. We sure enough don’t want to be growing bodies,” said one cemetery opponent wearing a cowboy hat. His flippant remark ignores the dignity the dead deserve.

“The need to provide a resting place for your loved one is a fundamental human need,” Khalil Abdur-Rashid, spokesman for the Islamic Association of Collin County, told CNN.

But David Meeks, pastor of Farmersville’s Bethlehem Baptist Church, quotes bible verses to support his concern for the encroaching dead. He fears the cemetery will attract terrorists.

“Any time you see the Islamic folks coming into a neighborhood, I think – my opinion – you can say we could be less safe in the future than we are right now,” he said.

Another pastor wrote a letter to the editor of the Farmersville Times in which he uses kinder words to assure residents that it’s perfectly Christian to interact with Muslims. “We can treat Muslims fairly,” he writes. “We can judge them by the same standard by which we want to be judged.”

Good to know someone sees no danger in the Islamic folks headed their way, dead or alive.

Ruth Nasrullah is a freelance writer and blogger based in Houston. Follow her @ruthnasrullah.